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A Future for Socialism? HAROLD WELLS A FUTURE FOR SOCIALISM? POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND THE "TRIUMPH OF CAPITALISM" TRINITY PRESS INTERNATIONAL Valley Forge, Pennsylvania EMMANUEL Copyright © 1996 Harold Wells All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Trinity Press International, P.O. Box 851, Valley Forge, PA 19482-0851 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wells, Harold. A future for socialism? : political theology and the "triumph of capitalism" / Harold Wells. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-56338-129-X (alk. paper) 1. Socialism, Christian. I. Title. HX51.W37 1996 335–dc20 95-52254 CIP Printed in the United States of America 96 97 98 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my Father Lorne A. Wells my first teacher Contents Preface .............................................................................................................................. xi Part I WHAT IS POLITICAL THEOLOGY? 1. Political Theology and Ideology................................................... 3 Christians, Socialism, and the Present Situation 3 Christian Socialism? 8 The Lordship of Jesus Christ 15 Ideology: A Positive Necessity 21 Love, Equality, and Class Struggle 23 2. Utopia and the Gospel of the Reign of God ................................. 29 Utopia 29 Resurrection, Salvation, and Historical Materialism 36 Stewardship/Mission 39 Sin and the Limits of Utopia 43 Part II THE TRIUMPH OF CAPITALISM? 3. Soviet Communism: The Tragedy of Utopia................................ 53 Lenin 54 The Warning of Rosa Luxemburg 57 Stalinism 58 A Story of Failure 61 A Note on Gramsci 62 4. North American Capitalism: Just What Is Wrong? ...................... 65 First, What Is Right with It? 65 Distortions within Capitalism: According to Galbraith 67 Economic Failure and Injustice 73 Canada • United States Is Capitalism Amoral? 81 The Limits of Social Democracy within Capitalism 83 vii viii Contents 5. Capitalism and the Third World .....................................................86 Domination and Debt 86 In Contrast: China 91 The Spectacle of East Asian Capitalism 93 The Idolatry of Capital 98 Part III WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 6. A Glance at the Early History ...................................................... 105 The Industrial Revolution 106 Early Practical Socialism in Britain 110 Robert Owen • Wesley and the Methodists • Anglican Christian Socialists France and Germany 115 Karl Marx 120 The Social Gospel 126 Walter Rauschenbusch • Salem Bland 7. Democratic Socialism /Social Democracy ....................................133 Fabian Socialism in Britain 134 The Socialist International at Frankfurt 136 United States 138 The Canadian Story 141 Sweden 153 8. Socialism in Its Many Varieties .................................................... 159 The Question of Definition 159 What Are the Other Socialist Alternatives? 162 Euro-Communism • Chinese Communism • Other Third World Communism • African Socialism • Worker Self-Management: Yugoslavia • Worker Ownership/Cooperativism • Communitarianism Contents ix CONCLUDING THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS 9. Christian Socialism: A Tradition Not to Be Abandoned............ 181 Speaking Theologically 181 Definitions/Distinctions 182 Successes/Failures 183 Naming the Alternative 184 Ambiguities/Utopia • A Multinational Socialism? Meanwhile: Socialist Pluralism/Penultimate Goals 188 Spiritual Character of the Socialist Movement 190 Notes ..................................................................................................... 193 Index .................................................................................................... 215 Preface This book is intended to be a modest contribution to an enormously important debate in theology: Does Christian faith lead us in one political direction rather than another? More specifically, does our Christian faith lead us in the direction of "socialism," as so many major theologians of this century — Rauschenbusch, Barth, Tillich, Moltmann, Soelle, Gutiérrez, Míguez Bonino, Radford Ruether — have suggested? Do the present collapse of communism and the "tri- umph of capitalism," as well as the current crisis of democratic socialism in many places, mean that "Christian socialism" has lost its credibility? Is there a future for socialism at all? This is an interdis- ciplinary study, an exercise in Christian political theology that draws heavily upon the information and insights provided by historians and social scientists. I am happy to acknowledge that I would not have launched into this particular project except for the invitation of Dr. Ken Ranney of Grand Prairie, Alberta, Canada, to participate in a Northern Alberta ecumenical seminar held at the United Church in Grand Prairie, for which a paper on "Christian socialism" was originally prepared. I am grateful to him for prompting me to think theologically about social and political structures under the conference title: "What would the world be like if we lived the way God wants us to live?" When I was first confronted with this question, it was immediately obvious to me that, of course, it would be a socialist world. If I may identify the background and bias that predisposed me to this answer: My own sympathy for socialist politics no doubt can be traced back to my childhood as part of a working-class family in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, and to the intelligent class conscious- ness of my father; also to certain friends and teachers who were my companions or mentors while I was an undergraduate at McMaster University. Professor George Grant, that great Canadian philosophical and political guru, who at that time called himself a socialist xi xii Pref ace and was fond of affirming his faith in "the blessed Trinity," was a superlatively provocative teacher and had a lasting influence on my thinking. Those were the early days of the New Democratic Party, when the achievements for Canadian society of its predecessor, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.), were highly visible. In the summer of 1962 I had the good luck to be appointed, as a student minister, to work in the city of Regina, Saskatchewan, and so found myself in the midst of one of the most exciting political battles in Canadian history. The C.C.F. government of the province of Saskatchewan, the first "socialist" government in North America, had finally (after nearly twenty years in power) brought in univer- sal, government-sponsored medicare, to which the physicians had responded by a walkout. People feared for their health, since only emergency medical services were provided. The Liberal and Progres- sive Conservative opposition parties opposed the legislation vigorously and had the backing of most of the media, as signs were set up at the provincial borders: "You are now entering the Red Province." I can vividly recall the bitter divisions that existed within the community, the church, and even within the household in which I was billeted. At the same time, the former premier, T. C. (Tommy) Douglas, the main architect of medicare, was running for election to the federal par- liament as new leader of the New Democratic Party, and this young student minister had the privilege of meeting him and working for him in a very humble "knocking on doors" capacity. Douglas's personal defeat in that election was heartbreaking (no doubt more so to me than to Douglas), and the defeat of the new party in Saskatchewan soon afterward convinced me that this was a movement and a party that was willing to fight against great odds with the most powerful forces in society, and to lose if necessary, while pursuing worthy social objectives. Later, as a young pastoral minister of the United Church of Can- ada in northern Ontario, I was politically active in a minor way in the fledgling New Democratic Party. My concern with political theol- ogy was particularly stimulated by years in southern Africa (1976-81) where at the National University of Lesotho I encountered many Marxist students and colleagues. Those were tumultuous political years for that region, beginning with the massacre at Soweto in 1976 and the murder of Steve Biko in 1977, proceeding through the Zim- babwe civil war to its culmination in independence in 1980, and the ongoing struggle against apartheid in South Africa. A Marxist anal- Preface xiii ysis of apartheid was predominant on that university campus: it was capitalism — in this case the love of cheap black labor and a high margin of profit — that kept apartheid firmly in place for so long, bolstered by the requisite economic investment and hypocritical pub- lic disapproval of the western/northern nations. "It was truly the capitalist nations of the west that killed Biko!" the campus radicals proclaimed in 1977, and with good cause. The enemy was rhetori- cally identified as "The Three Big C's: Colonialism, Capitalism, and Christianity." Both racism and religion were seen as ideological func- tions of capitalist profiteering, and Christianity had been complicit in the pacification of African peoples in the face of colonial expan- sion and exploitation. I was moved by the commitment and high aspirations of so many students and colleagues who longed for "so- cialism," seeing their struggle as a quest not only for racial equality, but as a fight for a qualitatively different society — a truly cooper- ative, nonexploitative social order.
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